Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Garden Of Stones by Sophie Littlefield

Synopsis: In the dark days of war, a mother makes the ultimate sacrifice Lucy Takeda is just fourteen years old, living in Los Angeles, when the bombs rain down on Pearl Harbor. Within weeks, she and her mother, Miyako, are ripped from their home, rounded up-along with thousands of other innocent Japanese-Americans-and taken to the Manzanar prison camp.

Buffeted by blistering heat and choking dust, Lucy and Miyako must
endure the harsh living conditions of the camp. Corruption and abuse creep into
every corner of Manzanar, eventually ensnaring beautiful, vulnerable Miyako.
Ruined and unwilling to surrender her daughter to the same fate, Miyako soon
breaks. Her final act of desperation will stay with Lucy forever...and spur her
to sins of her own.

Bestselling author Sophie Littlefield weaves a powerful tale of stolen innocence and survival that echoes through generations, reverberating between mothers and daughters. It is a moving chronicle of injustice, triumph and the unspeakable acts we commit in the name of love.

My Thoughts:

Garden
Of Stones was an inexplicably moving account of the internment of
Japanese-Americans during WWII after the bombing of Pearl Harbour. It's a tale
of love, sacrifice, survival and the unfathomable cost of fear and social
prejudice on innocents.

Miyako Takedo and her daughter Lucy are just 2 of the thousands of innocent
Americans forcibly detained in prison camps for their Japanese ancestry. Sophie
Littlefield draws from first person accounts, journals and interviews of
internees so the detail felt credible and held my attention completely.

I was unbelievably shocked at Miyako's desperate act to keep her daughter safe.
I'm not passing judgement but it's beyond heartbreaking that a mother feels she
is left with no choice but the one she makes.

The effects ripple through generations, fast forward to 1978 and it's Lucy's
daughter, Patty focusing on her mother's past and secrets. I'm not giving any
more away, it's a slow reveal and one you just have to read yourself.

Manzanar's appalling conditions, cruelty,
sexual harrassment and abuse is harrowing to read but a nation's failure of
conscienceshouldbe compulsory reading.